Authenticity as Self-Transcendence: The Enduring Insights of Bernard Lonergan PDF
Preview Authenticity as Self-Transcendence: The Enduring Insights of Bernard Lonergan
- N - The Enduring Insights of Bernard Lonergan N M H. MC University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana Copyright © 2015 by the University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCarthy, Michael H., 1942– Authenticity as self-transcendence : the enduring insights of Bernard Lonergan / Michael H. McCarthy. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-268-03537-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-268-03537-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-268-08702-9 (e-book) 1. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. I. Title. B995.L654M33 2015 191—dc23 2015031817 This e-Book was converted from the original file by a third party vendor. Readers who notice formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected] N N Preface vii The Tangled Knot of Old and New: Lonergan’s Project of Critical Appropriation 1 The Tangled Knot 5 Where Are We Now? 11 A Critical Cultural Center 24 The Vetera 51 The Nova 83 Objective Knowing and Authentic Living 107 The Defining Revolutions of Modernity 109 The Anthropological Turn: Human Nature and History 117 The Critique of Objectivity and Truth 130 The Polymorphic Subject 135 Cognitional Theory: From Logic to Method 142 The Centrality of Insight 149 Critical Realism 156 Objectivity Reconsidered 166 Authenticity as Self-Transcendence 171 Maturity Is Comprehensive 180 vi Contents Authentic Faith in a Secular Age 181 Our Secular Age 182 Rising to the Challenge of Our Time 207 Enlightenment, Science, and Faith 219 Exclusive and Religious Humanism 230 Religious Authenticity 248 The Chill Winds of Modernity: The Profound Challenge of Catholic Renewal 259 Critical Christian Humanism 261 The Catholic Struggle with Modernity 265 Aggiornamento 271 The Second Vatican Council 275 Critical Aggiornamento 283 Critical Reason and Religious Truth 286 An Ethics of Authenticity: Personal and Communal 323 Realism, Repentance, Reform, and Renewal 351 Epilogue 353 Notes 359 Bibliography 393 Index 403 N N Bernard Lonergan is one of the great, unheralded thinkers of the twenti- eth century. Ample evidence of his intellectual greatness can be found in his writing. But critical recognition of his philosophical and cultural im- portance has been remarkably limited. In secular academic circles he re- mains largely unknown. And even within Christian centers of learning, familiarity with his name far exceeds familiarity with his work. My own respect for Lonergan has only deepened since reading Insight as a doctoral student at Yale in the 1960s. After graduating from Yale, I con- tinued to study Lonergan during several decades teaching philosophy at Vassar College. The more philosophers I read and taught, ancient, medi - eval, modern, and contemporary, the more impressed I became with the quality of Lonergan’s mind and the great relevance of his methodo logical work in philosophy and theology. I had been interested in metaphilosophi- cal questions since writing my Yale dissertation. The more I compared Lonergan’s distinctive conception of philosophy with that of several great contemporary metaphilosophers—Frege, Cassirer, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Sellars, and Rorty—the more impressed I became. This sustained intellectual engagement led me to write The Crisis of Philosophy, where I argued for the superiority of Lonergan’s philosophical program to those of his analytic and phenomenological rivals. In the present volume, I de- velop and expand that earlier argument with four new essays, designed to show Lonergan’s exceptional relevance to the cultural situation of late mo dernity. My purpose is not to gain belated recognition for the dead, but to exhibit the power and vitality of Lonergan’s thought for the living. vii viii Preface My hope is that these essays will serve as a bridge between Lonergan and a much broader contemporary audience, whose members stand only to benefit from a sustained encounter with a mind of such clarity, relevance, and depth. Lonergan was a foundational thinker committed to discovering the basic principles of knowledge, being, and value. He was also an integrative thinker committed to unifying the intellectual and moral achievements of the West. A genuinely learned man, he recognized the historical dangers of both foundational and integrative thought. But his critical knowledge of history did not deter him from embracing the cultural project that de - fined his personal life and career as a Christian humanist: raising Chris- tian philosophy and theology to meet the challenges and standards of his time. In undertaking a project of this magnitude, Lonergan was explicitly attempting to do for the twentieth century what Thomas Aquinas had done for medieval philosophy and theology in thirteenth-century Paris. But Lonergan was acutely aware that the cultural challenges and critical standards of his time were markedly different from those of Aquinas, his traditional mentor and guide. My description of Lonergan as a critical Christian humanist corre- sponds closely to his own account of the three dynamic vectors operative in human history. Because Lonergan was a humanist, he believed in the native human aspiration to and capacity for self-transcendence. Because he was a critical humanist, he explicitly acknowledged the power of bias and sin to prevent or obstruct self-transcendence, as well as the repeated resort to ideology to justify that prevention or obstruction. And because he was a faithful Christian, he relied on the power of divine grace to sub- latethe personal quest for self-transcendence and to heal the destructive consequences of bias and sin. Lonergan’s Christian humanism was inter- preted and transmitted through the lens of a developed historical con- sciousness. He had a profound sense of the cultural challenges of his time and a clear strategy for meeting and overcoming them. He combined a synoptic vision of cultural history with a deep sense of historical respon- sibility, believing that the work of redeeming the world was part of the mission Christ entrusted to his apostles. But it was also part of Lonergan’s mission as a Jesuit specifically called to meet the crises of his age (Second Collection, 183). Preface ix Lonergan claimed that the cultural crisis of the late modern West had at least three interrelated dimensions. Intellectually, the great discoveries of modern science and scholarship have transformed our understanding of nature and history. These enduring epistemic achievements, however, have come at a price. Because modern learning is specialized and highly differentiated, we know vastly more than our classical and medieval prede - cessors, but we no longer know how the various parts of our knowledge fit together. The fragmentation of our knowledge is particularly striking with respect to our understanding of human existence, where it has generated a disabling paradox. Despite our highly specialized knowledge of human na- ture and history, we are no longer confident, as a society and culture, that our most important factual and evaluative judgments are objectively true. Our common moral situation is also paradoxical. Contemporary so- cieties are far more ethically ambitious than the cities and empires of an- tiquity, and even than medieval Christendom. Inspired by the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century, we seek liberty, equality, and justice for all people; and we accept personal and collective responsibility for ad- vancing these utopian ideals. At the level of shared moral advocacy, our aspirations are unprecedented. At the same time, we conspicuously lack a unifying moral philosophy to clarify and justify these demanding moral ideals. This troubling gap between moral ontology and moral advocacy helps explain the instability of our culture, which vacillates uneasily be- tween uncritical idealism and inordinate suspicion. Contemporary religious pluralism now extends from the three Abra- hamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to the traditional religions of the East and the indigenous faiths of the Americas and Africa. In the midst of this unsettling pluralism, “the masters of suspicion” and their cul- tural allies have mounted a frontal assault on religious knowledge, mor - ality, and hope. In many sectors of our culture, particularly in the secular academy, ontological naturalists and exclusive humanists have rejected tra- ditional religious allegiances and experimented in living without God. Though Lonergan firmly believes that the deepest currents of modernity are compatible with religious authenticity, the cultural challenges facing mature believers today are more formidable than ever before. All three of these crises—epistemic, moral, and spiritual—are par- ticularly challenging for the Roman Catholic Church, to which Lonergan
The list of books you might like
